Ever since President Donald Trump’s disastrous interview with NBC’s Lester Holt on May 11 2017 -- in which he may have admitted to obstructing justice -- Trump has given in-person TV interviews to only friendly journalists who mostly avoid asking tough questions.

Right-wing media figures are jumping to defend Fox News host Sean Hannity after it was revealed that Hannity has been a client of longtime lawyer to President Donald Trump, Michael Cohen. Hannity’s defenders are suggesting that he has “been victimized” by the revelation of his name, claiming that he “wasn’t engaging” Cohen “as a lawyer,” and even arguing that Hannity possibly “did not know he was a client of Michael Cohen."

During interviews with a litany of conservative talk radio hosts, President Donald Trump continued his attacks on mainstream media, claiming certain outlets have “an agenda” and are routinely “inaccurate.”

In interviews with conservative radio hosts Mike Gallagher and Chris Plante, Trump attacked several mainstream outlets, including CNN, MSNBC, and NBC, calling them “so inaccurate” and alleging that the outlets “have an agenda.” Trump also lashed out at the media during an interview with Brian Kilmeade, host of the radio show Kilmeade & Friends and the Fox News morning show Fox & Friends, calling the media “a bunch of fakers.” Trump mentioned that Kilmeade has been “fair” to him and added, “Fox is good. Fox -- we love you, Fox.”

BRIAN KILMEADE (HOST): Can I ask you what you thought about when you brought up past presidents and what they've done. Do you want to clarify anything there?

DONALD TRUMP: Well there's nothing to clarify because if you look at my whole, and this was again Fake News CNN. I mean, they're just a bunch of fakers. So, they asked me that question. And for the most part, to the best of my knowledge, I think I've called every family of somebody that's died.

[...]

KILMEADE: Nine months in. You happy?

TRUMP: I love doing it. I'm getting tremendous support even in your polls I'm getting tremendous support. And it's hard to believe I can get support when you have so many phony stories out there. You know like CNN, like MSNBC, like NBC. NBC is probably worse than CNN. But all I know is Fox is good. Fox -- we love you, Fox.

KILMEADE: We’re fair.

TRUMP: You are fair.

KILMEADE: Thank you.

TRUMP: You know what, truth is, you hit me when it’s needed, you do. I mean, you do in particular, right? But the fact is, you’re fair.

KILMEADE: I think we’re fair.

TRUMP All I want is fair. I don’t want anything else. I just want fair, and Fox has really been fair and I appreciate it.

From the October 17 edition of Salem Radio Network’s The Mike Gallagher Show:

MIKE GALLAGHER (HOST): Well, again, and I don’t mean to beat a dead horse here, but I'm the train coming here reading on a CNN site that you don't reach out to talk radio. I'm like, wait a minute, what am I doing in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday?

TRUMP: They're really despicable.

GALLAGHER: It’s terrible.

TRUMP: They're despicable people. They do a terrible job. Their ratings are reflecting it. They do very badly, relative to others.

GALLAGHER: Right.

TRUMP: And I'll tell you what, it’s just something that we have done so well with legislation. I'll give you an example, we have way over 50 legislative approvals, where we went through the Senate, where we went through the House. Nobody talks about it. They say we have none. They actually say we have none. We almost a record a number. It’s almost a record number, and it may be a record but I always say “almost” because then they’ll check you. And they’ll say, “Well, you know, in 1824.” So, they’ll say, “Donald Trump isn’t telling the truth.” These are very, very terrible people.

[...]

GALLAGHER: I talk to people. The disconnect between the people, the millions who support you, and the media is extraordinary. It's as if the media is tone deaf about the people who want you to succeed so that the country succeeds.

TRUMP: The New York Times, TheWashington Post are so inaccurate, so inaccurate. They will take a good event and make it bad. They will take something that really is positive -- I’m going to just speak, it’s just the way it is. And actually, people admit it. And actually, TheNew York Times almost admits it, they say, we don't even care.

From the October 17 edition of WMAL’s The Chris Plante Show:

CHRIS PLANTE (HOST): What’s surprised you the most in terms of big messes left on your plate when you got here that just, sort of, knocked you back?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I think I’ve been surprised by a lot of things. And when you say surprised, I know the level of viciousness in the world. I know the level of hate in the world. I know the level of -- Actually, dishonesty in the media is one of the things that’s surprised me the most. I thought after I won the media would become much more stable and much more honest. They’ve gone crazy. CNN is a joke. NBC is a total joke. You watch what they report. It bears no relationship to what I’m doing. But the media is absolutely dishonest. And I have never seen, frankly, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. But, The New York Times, The Washington Post, they write whatever they want to write. You know, they have an agenda. We’ll have to figure out what their agenda is. But they do have an agenda. I think that's one of the biggest surprises is the level of dishonesty. Interestingly, after I won, I said, well now I’ll bet the media starts to shape up and it’s over so, now -- And it actually has gotten worse than during the campaign.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has appeared on Fox News twice as often as on other cable and broadcast networks combined, and he has frequently granted interviews to right-wing talk radio shows and other climate-denying outlets, Media Matters has found.

Pruitt’s media strategy is right in line with that of his boss. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump eschewed mainstream media outlets; it's a pattern his administration has continued since the election, favoring conservative and right-wing media outlets that are friendly to President Trump's agenda. By following the same approach, Pruitt has been able to push misinformation, avoid tough questioning, and appeal to the president’s political base.

Pruitt appeared on Fox News twice as often as he did on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC combined

Scott Pruitt has been a guest on Fox News a total of 12 times since his confirmation. From February 17, when he was sworn in, to August 14, Pruitt made twice as many appearances on Fox News (12) as he did on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC combined (6).* With the exception of twoappearances on Fox News Sunday, Pruitt rarely faced tough questions on Fox News and was able to use the network as a platform for pushing misleadingtalking points without rebuttal. Pruitt appeared most frequently on Fox & Friends, Trump’s favoriteshow, which some journalists have criticized as “state TV” and “a daily infomercial for the Trump presidency” for its sycophantic coverage of the president and his administration. Pruitt made the following appearances on Fox News:

By comparison, Pruitt made only six appearances on the other major cable and broadcast television networks combined. From the time Pruitt took the helm at the EPA through August 14, he was a guest just six times total on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and NBC, and he made no appearances at all on CBS. On each of these non-Fox programs, Pruitt faced questions either about whether Trump still believes climate change is a hoax or about Pruitt's own views on climate change. In response, Pruitt either avoided answering the question or repeated his “lukewarmer” stance that climate change is happening but we don’t know how much is human-caused. In all but one of these appearances, Pruitt repeated false or misleadingtalkingpoints about the Paris climate agreement. Here are Pruitt's guest appearances on cable news and broadcast networks other than Fox:

*Pruitt’s appearance on Meet the Press aired on both NBC and MSNBC, but for the purposes of this study, we only counted it as an NBC appearance.

Pruitt has been a frequent guest on national right-wing talk radio shows

Pruitt has also been a frequent guest on nationally broadcast right-wing talk radio shows since his confirmation, Media Matters found. We examined the top 10 shows listed on Talkers.com's Top Talk Audiences list, as well as numerous shows broadcast on the SiriusXM Patriot channel, and found the following:

Hugh Hewitt has a years-long record of climate denial: He wrote in a 2011 blog post that “we don’t know” how much humans contribute to global warming or “if it will be harmful or if there's anything we can do about it.” Hewitt also downplayed the threat of climate change in a September 2016 episode of his show in which he said that warming might be "a real problem over 500 years."

Brian Kilmeade has denied climate change, both as a host on his radio show and as a co-host on Fox & Friends. On a 2013 episode of his radio show (then called Kilmeade & Friends), Kilmeade suggested that only “corrupt” climatologists accept human-caused climate change. On the same day, Kilmeade disputed on Fox & Friends that it is “settled scientific collective thought” that human activity causes climate change.

On the January 12, 2017, episode of the David Webb Show, Webb cast doubt on the scientific consensus around climate change, arguing that it's not significant that the vast majority of climate scientists publishing peer-reviewed research agree on the human causes of warming: "You can have 99 percent of peer-reviewed, but it doesn’t mean that the one percent like that guy named Copernicus won’t be correct about the fact that the Earth was not flat and we were not the center of the universe.”

Breitbart.com has a long track record of pushing blatant climate science misinformation and attacking climate scientists and climate science, calling researchers “talentless low-lives” and “abject liars” and climate change a “hoax.” Breitbart is also a go-to outlet for fossil fuel industry-funded academics who want to get publicity for their work.

MICHAEL SAVAGE (HOST): Please explain to me how come ancient core samples from the Antarctic show that there was climate change going on hundreds of thousands of years before man industrialized. [Whitehouse] would not have an answer for us, Mr. Pruitt. The science is fake science that they’ve been foisting upon a gullible public.

SCOTT PRUITT: You know what’s interesting, Michael? There was a great article in The Wall Street Journal to your point, by Steven Koonin, a scientist at NYU, called “red team/blue team.” I don’t know if you saw it or not. But he proposed that we should have a red team/blue team approach with respect to CO2. We should have red team scientists and blue team scientists, in an open setting, debate, discuss, and have an open discussion about what do we know, what don’t we know, and the American people deserve truth.

SAVAGE: Amen to that, because we’ve had no debate whatsoever. All Obama told us was 98 percent of scientists agree. So what? There was a time when 100 percent of scientists said the Earth is flat. Did that make them right?

PRUITT: No, look, I mean the reason there’s not consensus, through policy in Washington, D.C., is because, truly, the American people don’t trust what has happened in the past several years with respect to regulatory policy and this issue.

Pruitt’s right-wing radio appearances have extended beyond nationally broadcast shows. E&E News reported in May that Pruitt appeared on “the local morning talk radio show of a North Dakota blogger who described the Obama administration's EPA as an enemy to the well-being of his state.” ThinkProgress noted that during a “state listening tour” in North Dakota earlier this month, “Pruitt stopped by the conservative talk radio show What’s On Your Mind to share his thoughts on a number of EPA-related issues.” During that conversation, Pruitt referred to the “so-called settled science” of climate change.

And on August 10, Pruitt appeared on a Texas radio show, Politicoreported, where he said his staff will assess the "accuracy" of a major federal climate report that's been drafted by scientists from 13 agencies. “Frankly this report ought to be subjected to peer-reviewed, objective-reviewed methodology and evaluation,” he said, ignoring the fact that the report has already undergone extensive peer review. Pruitt also used his appearance on the show to cast doubt on climate science in general.

Pruitt has given interviews to other climate-denying outlets, including online publications and cable business shows

In addition to his June interview on Breitbart’s radio show, Pruitt granted the Breitbart website an interview in March.

Besides his appearances on cable news shows, Pruitt also went on cable business shows and networks that serve as platforms for climate denial -- most notably CNBC’s Squawk Box, where he told climate-denying host Joe Kernen that he did not believe carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming. Pruitt has also frequently given interviews on Fox Business Network, which mirrorsFox News’denialist stanceon global warming. Pruitt made the following appearances on the Fox Business Network:

One appearance on The Intelligence Report with Trish Regan on April 12.

Pruitt’s courting of conservative media is “on an entirely different level” from predecessors

Scott Waldman of E&E News reported that after “weeks of blowback” from Pruitt’s appearance on Squawk Box, the EPA chief “shifted his media appearances to friendlier venues,” a move that “allowed him to tee off on a favorite series of talking points: Obama's energy policy was ‘America second,’ energy industry innovations have reduced the U.S. carbon footprint, the so-called war on coal is now over, EPA's job is to encourage business growth in concert with the environment, and the era of punitive action against energy companies is over.” Waldman also noted that Pruitt’s “courting of conservative media is on an entirely different level” from previous EPA administrators. From Waldman’s article:

To be sure, all administrations seek out friendly press. President Obama talked about health care on the "Between Two Ferns" comedy program with Zach Galifianakis, which Republicans criticized as undignified. And former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy granted exclusive interviews to left-leaning outlets like Mother Jones and Grist.

But critics say Pruitt's courting of conservative media is on an entirely different level.

[…]

Liz Purchia, a former EPA spokeswoman under the Obama administration, said it's extremely unusual to place an administrator only on partisan outlets. She noted that McCarthy regularly interacted with reporters from outlets that produced coverage EPA officials did not appreciate.

[…]

"Only talking to far right-wing media outlets, they are only talking to a small group of Americans that regularly follow them, and they are intentionally going to reporters who will only ask them questions they want to hear and aren't speaking to the broader American people about their actions," Purchia said.

In Mother Jones, Rebecca Leber also reported that “since taking office, Pruitt has almost exclusively relied on a small number of conservative media outlets to tell an upbeat version of his leadership at the EPA, with occasional detours into the Sunday news shows,” creating “an echo chamber cheerleading the EPA’s regulatory rollbacks, Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, and its newfound anti-science denial.”

Leber also quoted Purchia remarking on how Pruitt’s approach to media interviews “isolates him from most Americans and instead plays to Trump’s base”:

Liz Purchia, an Obama-era EPA communications staffer, says the EPA’s attention to right-wing audiences resembles Trump’s tactics at the White House. “They’re tightly controlling [Pruitt’s] public events and interviews, which isolates him from most Americans and instead plays to Trump’s base,” Purchia said in an email. “They’re not trying to use communications tactics to reach a broad audience.”

Charts by Sarah Wasko

Methodology

Media Matters searched the following terms in Nexis, iQ Media, and TVEyes to find Scott Pruitt's on-air TV appearances from the date of his swearing in as EPA Administrator on February 17 to August 14: “Pruitt,” "EPA administrator," "E.P.A. administrator," "EPA chief," "E.P.A. chief," "EPA head," "E.P.A. head," "head of the EPA," "head of the E.P.A.," "head of the Environmental Protection Agency," "Environmental Protection Agency Administrator," or "Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency." We did not count instances of networks airing Pruitt’s appearance at the White House’s June 2 press briefing.

For radio appearances, Matters Matters searched the same terms in Veritone for the top 10 programs in Talkers.com's Top Talk Audiences list and the following programs that air on SiriusXM Patriot: Breitbart News Daily, David Webb Show, Brian Kilmeade Show, and The Wilkow Majority.

On the July 13 edition of Fox & Friends, Ainsley Earhardt hosted a “panel of moms” from “all walks of life” to find out whether “everyday Americans” care about President Donald Trump’s possible ties to Russia. As Earhardt introduced the panel, the show’s on-screen banners failed to disclose the professions of the panelists who are conservative Republicans and Trump supporters, one of whom claims to work for a Fox affiliate.

The panel featured seven women who, as they spoke, were introduced via on-screen banners using the following descriptions:

Danielle McLaughlin -- mother and Democratic strategist

Dr. Rebecca Grant -- mother and national security analyst

Dr. Wendy Osefo -- liberal commentator, mother of two

Carla D'Addesi -- mother of three

Kathy Barnette -- armed forces veteran, mother of two

Angel Voggenreiter -- mother of two

Hope Houston -- mother of six

The first three women, who all had left-leaning opinions, were assigned identifiers related to their professions; Fox ensured its viewers knew McLaughlin and Osefo’s political leanings. But the other four women who all professed conservative political beliefs were identified only as mothers (one was also described as an "armed forces veteran," but her current profession was omitted).

Kathy Barnette is the founder of a “Christian conservative news” website and has previously appeared on another “panel of moms” on Fox & Friends. She claims to host a show on a Fox affiliate radio station in Philadelphia on which she has discussed topics like “an examination of Islam” and the “Homosexual AGENDA” (emphasis original). Her Facebook page contains multiple posts in support of Trump. Last year, Barnette spoke at an event sponsored by the Pennsylvania chapter of the Oath Keepers, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as “one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the U.S. today.”

Angel Voggenreiter works for McLean Bible Church’s radio show in Virginia. She has previously appeared in multiple Republican National Committee advertisements.

Media Matters could not find any information online about Hope Houston.

From the July 13 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends:

AINSLEY EARHARDT (HOST): The mainstream media's number one obsession still the Trump administration's alleged ties to Russia. But do everyday Americans care about this? We brought in our panel of moms from all walks of life to find out. It's a segment we're calling "Parental Advisory."

[...]

What are your concerns, as a mom?

HOPE HOUSTON: As a mom I'm really concerned about tax reform and the economy and reform of health care because I have six kids and they are all kind of entering the workforce at different stages. And I really want a robust and positive economy for them to participate in.

[...]

CARLA D'ADDESI: I'm not concerned about Russia. We're not following that. We feel that there's no evidence that is putting our president and commander-in-chief in a bad light. We have full confidence in our president that is he going to do an amazing job with the economy. He has hired tens of thousands of employees. He's highly successful. And we are very confident in the team that he has put around him.

EARHARDT: Kathy?

KATHY BARNETTE: Yeah, likewise. The issues regarding jobs, taxes, health care, all those things are very important. And one thing that has not been mentioned yet, I'm also concerned about the rampant amount of lawlessness that we are seeing on the streets, as well as throughout the ranks of our government. When I have to think twice about wearing a Donald Trump T-shirt because I don't know what kind of liberal lunatic is going to meet me at the grocery store, I think that is a very important concern of ours today.

EARHARDT: Angel?

ANGEL VOGGENREITER: I agree with that also. Something I didn't hear anyone mention is Obamacare. I'm ready for that to be repealed and replaced for my family. Our premiums have gone through the roof. And that's what I hear a lot of moms talking about for our kids.

CORRECTION: The language in this post has been updated to clarify that Kathy Barnette claimed she is a radio host on a Fox affiliate, that broadcasts her show.

Fox News radio host Todd Starnes is headlining a special “pastors’ briefing” at the Texas Capitol on March 6 and 7 whose sponsors include the anti-LGBTQ hate group the Family Research Council (FRC). Other speakers at the event include FRC’s president and vice president of church ministries and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton are also listed as unconfirmed speakers at the event, whose attendees will also go to a March 7 public hearing on the anti-transgender Senate Bill 6 (SB 6).

Trump’s staunchest supporters called the hiring of Breitbart News chairman Steve Bannon as the new chief executive for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign “an inspired choice” and “fantastic news” after the move was reported. Elsewhere, the decision has been called “insanity,” with former Breitbart News employees disparaging the relationship between Trump and Breitbart News as “pathetic and disgusting.”